A 26-year-old “online predator” was sentenced last Friday, October 25, to life sentence by a Belfast court, in Northern Ireland, after the suicide of one of its 70 victims, a 12-year-old girl living in the United States. Alexander McCartney, who recognized the 185 accusations of girls against him, He is “the first person in the United Kingdom to be condemned for homicide when his victim resided in a foreign country,” said a Northern Irish police official. Among the crimes, there are also 50 for blackmail.
The charges concern 70 victims from countries including the United Kingdom, the United States, Ireland and Australia, but Northern Irish police believe it is just one small fraction of the around 3,500 victims which are believed to have been attacked in around 30 countries. The condemned, Alexander McCartney, a 26-year-old computer science student, contacted girls around the world on messaging sites such as Snapchat and Instagram, making them believe they were talking to a teenager of a similar age online, a practice known as ‘catfishing’ (or identity theft).
Eamonn Corrigan, Chief of the Police Service of Northern Ireland, speaks to journalists outside Belfast Crown Court, following the sentencing of Alexander McCartney, 26, for mass online child sexual abuse and blackmailing girls across the world
Then, asked them for sexual images or encouraged them to participate in activities also of a sexual nature through a webcam or a mobile phone, which he then shared online with other people and used to threaten and blackmail minors. On some occasions, as was revealed in the trial, McCartney forced his victims to involve siblings as young as 3 years old in the abuse.
One of his victims, Cimarron Thomas, a 12-year-old girl from West Virginia, committed suicide in 2018 with her father’s gun after sexual abuse committed digitally and student blackmail computer science, according to the court. The little girl’s lifeless body was found by her 9-year-old sister.
McCartney, who pleaded guilty to all charges, listened glumly as the judge recounted his crimes and stood with his eyes closed when the sentence was announced. Despite being sentenced to ‘life imprisonment’ under Irish law, Judge John O’Hara told Belfast Crown Court, McCartney He may be released in 2039.
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